Imagining Africa, remaking the world: W.E.B. Du Bois' history for the future.

This essay examines W.E.B. Du Bois' rearticulation during the 1940s of his long-standing idea that African liberation was a necessary step in the creation of a more democratic world. Du Bois' writing of Africa into world history, as both land of civilizational achievement and object of western terror, helped make the case for a global frame of economic justice and, concomitantly, an extension of human rights. He hoped as well to explore the possibilities of political organization and affective belonging that might draw Africans further within the global community. This essay concludes by considering how Du Bois' historiographical project provides a substantial challenge to the global racial order in our 'colonial present'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]